Henry Winkler: Being Henry - The Fonz…and Beyond
A book review of the Fonz's memoir, which, if we're giving out grades, would get an easy AAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Being Henry: The Fonz…and Beyond
Henry Winkler
Celadon Books
A new generation knows Henry Winkler for winning cameos and recurring characters on Barry and Arrested Development. There was the rebith that started with Scream and The Waterboy.
But to at least two generations he is — and will always be — The Fonz. He was the very epitome of cool when you watched Happy Days as a youngster. And I loved the show Happy Days.
To watch it now, might be to no longer find The Fonz either cool, or funny, but the memory of the character is burned deep if you were watching it either when it was first made, or, as in my case, if you were young enough when the re-runs hit.
Henry Winkler was a trained thespian with a decade of theatre work under his belt when, at around age 30, he booked the gig of his lifetime. A decade older than his co-star Ron Howard, they were nevertheless good pals and formed a bond. Winkler’s memoir wisely takes us right through the journey of Happy Days. Its title the very antithesis of Winkler’s own early years and upbringing. To say his relationship with his parents was tricky or distanced is to put it very mildly.
Winkler writes happily of his time on TV’s biggest show — and his near overnight success after a decade of toiling away at his craft. Suddenly he’s dating a woman whose child from a previous relationship really thinks the character Fonzie has stepped out of the TV frame, and off the lid of the lunchbox he takes to school, to date his mother. It’s surreal. He’s all over merchandise, and even as the storylines get sillier — leading to the now pop-culture marker of the literal Shark Jump — he is famous beyond measure, and making good money too of course.
Then the show ends, and Winkler is completely and utterly boxed into being The Fonz. He can’t work, he can’t be seen as anything other than a leather jacket wearing, tough-talking greaser with charm. He is Arthur Fonzarelli, and that is it.
But he has the love of a good woman — still married to the solo mother he dated while on the show. We even get her direct persective in the book via a couple of chapters written by her, or at the least written entirely from her point of view.
He muddles through the 1980s and into the 90s, a TV movie here, a stint as a successful producer (MacGuyver) and a few business relationships that start off great, then sour.
His attitude throughout remains remarkable, at least in the re-telling of the tale.
He eventually scores a cameo on Scream — and Adam Sandler books his childhood hero for The Waterboy. And then we have the reinvention of Henry Winkler. A comic actor that can play a range of button-shirt mild-psychos. He’s funny, and charming and wise, and weirdly wide-eyed, and his story is as wonderful as you think it would be. Written and told brilliantly. And he just seems as nice as you always thought he would be.
One of the better celeb-memoirs I’ve read in a while.
